


Waiting to Be Human

by atamascolily



Category: The Adventures of Sinbad (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Filling in gaps suggested by the series but never explored directly, Gen, Lots of head canons in one place, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12787074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: It takes a while for Dermott to learn to be a hawk, but after a while, he's not sure he's ready to be human again. Don't ever try to tell Maeve that, though.





	Waiting to Be Human

The first few weeks After were the worst. It took a long time for him to accept his body didn't work the way he remembered it; weeks where the slightest stumble sent him spinning in a tangle of wings and claws. He stood out from all the other birds, who had all the instincts and parental modeling and whatever else real birds needed in order to be birds. He had... nothing. Only his damn stubbornness and his sister, and his sister couldn't help him sort this one out. Figuring out how his body worked was something he had to do on his own. 

Maeve helped, though, singing to him, talking to him, cursing at him. He probably would have gone mad without her voice as a lifeline to guide him through the torrent of overwhelming sensations, without her voice to call him home. She hooded his eyes, which was instantly calming, carried him, fed him scraps of meat (first cooked, later raw and bloody), and generally took care of things until he was stable. She picked him up and untangled his feathers when he fell, she stroked and soothed him. For those months of disorientation, he was dependent on her in ways he had not been with a human body. 

There were compensations. Flying, once he'd figured it out, was delightful, though the first attempts were unmitigated disasters, though thankfully he avoided any serious injuries. Finally, Maeve started launching him out of trees and towers, before his human mind had a chance to panic and ruin everything. Once he was in the air and moving, he could soar, catching invisible currents of air that swirled over land and sea, bridges to flight. It took several months before he could push off into the air on his own without some sort of boost. 

Eventually, once he'd gotten comfortable with flight - and, most importantly, safely landing - he moved on to hunt for himself. He was ashamed to admit it to Maeve, but he enjoyed watching the motions of prey from a distance, stooping for the kill in a sudden burst of speed, tearing with claws and beak and swallowing the steaming entrails in a few quick gulps. He knew Maeve could feel it - it took him even longer to relearn even a modicum of shielding, so she felt everything he felt, joy, pain, all of it in one tangled muddle of sensation. It was a wonder _she_ didn't go mad with all that in her mind. 

But Maeve was strong. He knew that. She'd always been the stronger of the two - physically, as well as emotionally. He'd been the tall, awkward, gangly one, better suited to long days copying the Bible and other texts under Brother Connor's tutelage. She was the free spirit, the wild one, the warrior, who'd convinced old Aidan to teach her swordplay when they were eight, while Dermott cheered her on from the sidelines. 

Maeve was headstrong and determined, just like Queen Medb of Connacht from the old stories, for whom she had been named. She was pale and fair, with shining red hair and a loud voice, where Dermott was dark-haired, quiet, and prone to melancholy. But their faces were the same, and they shared each others' thoughts and feelings for as long as they chould remember. What one knew, the other knew, although eventually, they'd gotten better about boundaries and developed into two different people instead of one mind in two bodies. 

The arrival of the evil sorceress Rumina - and Dermott's subsequent transformation at the end of that ruinous encounter, shattered their equilibrium. Bit by bit, brother and sister began to painstakingly rebuild in the aftermath. Like flight and motion, it took a long time. 

Maeve blamed herself for everything. She blamed Dermott's fate on her own weakness, her own failures. He'd been in no state to convince her otherwise at first, and then the disease was too entrenched and there was no persuading her after that. She refused to believe him when he tried. She got angry and then she cried, and he wasn't sure which was worse, so eventually he left her alone and stopped bringing it up, though he never stopped noticing it. Her self-doubt festered, nagged at him - he felt it on the edge of his waking consciousness, though she was better at shielding, so he had to concentrate in order to feel it. On the surface, all appeared well, but there were layers and depths to Maeve's heart and she was very good at self-deception when she wanted to be. 

She swore that she'd transform him back, that she'd stop at nothing - as long as it was good and true and right and honest - to restore him to his true form, the way he was Before. Her vow was fierce and it blazed in his mind, shining like the sun on her flaming hair. She would grow stronger. She would kill Rumina and unmake the magic that had wrought such devastation in both their lives. She would study and she would learn and she would wander until she found those who knew the secret arts she desperately needed to fulfil her quest. She burned with righteous anger, so hot that it troubled him at times, for dim human reasons he couldn't quite fathom with his bird-self, the part of him that was more interested in movement and meat than abstract concepts like revenge. Hawks didn't really understand revenge - that was a human thing. Hawks understood the thrill of the hunt, the chase of prey, the grim satisfaction of feeding, but not without need. He could understand the idea of Maeve's hunt, Maeve's chase, Maeve's prey, but it all felt distant and arcane to him, lacking the immediacy of his animal life. 

Once he'd gotten the hang of it, it was easier to be a hawk than human. On the good days, with clear skies and warm breezes, and the sunlight on the sea just so, he wasn't sure he wanted to go back to the clumsy, awkward human body he'd left behind, which was inevitable if Maeve succeeded. How could he live without flight, now that he knew exactly, in exquisite detail, what he was giving up? He'd been near-sighted as a human - how could he surrender vision keener than the sharpest of Firouz's magniscopes, when movements thousands of feet away were so vividly immediate? How would he manage being human when he couldn't hunt for himself anymore and had to make a living? What sort of life would be left for him? Maeve would help him - he never questioned this - and probably Sinbad, too, after they'd taken up with Sinbad and his crew - but would he want them to? What else could he do? 

He knew his own doubts distressed her, and he tried to conceal them as best he could, but he knew she knew, and he knew she knew he knew. She responded by retreating even further into her own convictions and self-blame, neither of which he wanted and both of which confused his hawk-senses. So he focused on the present as much as possible. His thoughts were images and feelings, not words. He stayed with her, he let her lead him, and he tried not to think about the future. It was easy enough to forget being human, to retreat into the hawk-body and the hawk-mind that came with it. Without Maeve, he knew he would retreat so fully into the hawk-self that he'd lose all hope of humanity. So he listened when she spoke. Did what she said. Trusted her. How could he ask her to give up her quest to save him? How could he ask her to leave him be? Hawks were perfectly capable of contentment, but they were not, as a rule, particularly happy. Didn't he, born and raised a human being, have a right to be happy? 

Eventually, Maeve found the magician Dim-Dim, who recognized Dermott's true nature at first sight, without anything needing to be said. Dermott liked Dim-Dim and trusted him instantly. When Maeve was with Dim-Dim, she lost some of that hard shell she projected and relaxed a little. When Dim-Dim was there, it was like the transformation had never happened and his sister was her true self again. 

_Rumina changed her as much as she changed me,_ he'd realized at the time. _That was her revenge against Maeve as much as against me for getting in her way._ More, really - Dermott had been just a pawn in Rumina's game. A way of getting to Maeve. A way of hurting her with every breath, every day, every glance at Dermott a reminder of failure. That was why he hated Maeve's self-doubt so much - it was letting the sorceress win. But he didn't know how to make her see that, and Dim-Dim vanished before his gentle lessons in sorcery and self-respect could fully take hold. 

It was Sinbad, of all people, who helped Maeve with this after Dim-Dim had gone. Dermott and Sinbad hadn't gotten on well at the beginning, something that had colored their relationship for months afterward. But over time, Sinbad began to sense Dermott's intelligence, and treat him first with grudging respect, then eventually as a sentient being in his own right rather than as a clever pet of Maeve's. Eventually, Dermott softened to Sinbad, too, but he could never resist a cheeky flourish now and then, just to let the man know Dermott wasn't a total pushover. 

He could see the looks that passed between his sister and Sinbad, what was said, and (more importantly) what wasn't said. It wasn't that he didn't approve - he liked how being with Sinbad helped Maeve to let go of the self-doubt and self-blame that were poisoning her from the inside out. But Sinbad already had far too high an opinion of himself for Dermott's taste. It was good to remind the sailor now and then that while he might boss humans around, hawks bowed to no one. 

Aside from emergencies, he did not reach out to Sinbad's mind. He and Maeve had been linked for so long even before the transformation, but Dermott found that he could speak with Sinbad if he chose. He wasn't sure if this was due to some latent power of his own, something borrowed from Maeve, or some receptive spark in Sinbad that made him more open to such experiences, unlike Firouz or Doubar. It didn't matter. He wasn't ready to open up to Sinbad, not yet. He'd leave it to Maeve, who was so fiercely protective of her brother's privacy and of her own, and who, being fully human, was far more equipped to handle the situation than Dermott was. But oh, was that arrogant, smug bastard in for a surprise when he learned who Dermott really was... The expression on Sinbad's face was going to be priceless. 

So Dermott watched and waited, biding time, soaring on the wind, stooping in for the kill, sitting companionably with Maeve in the evenings. One day, perhaps, things would be different. One day, perhaps, he'd be human again, with all the attending fears and challenges. But for a hawk, who lived entirely in the present, with only a dim recollection of the past and a hazy imagination of the future, life was good enough.


End file.
